A normal user's look into the world of 3D Stereo Technologies

Today Nvidia has released a WHQL version of the 258.96 drivers for both the GeForce GPU driver and the 3D Vision driver and they are both also available as a new Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision Driver CD v1.33 WHQL. The WHQL drivers do not bring anything new since the 258.96 beta drivers that were made available last week with the official introduction of the GeForce GTX 460 GPUs, but these are not beta anymore. Just as a reminder, the 258.96 drivers add support for the GeForce GTX 460 GPU and also official 3D Vision support for three new 3D DLP projectors from Optoma and these are: Optoma GT720, Optoma HD67, and Optoma HD66.

Along with the release of the new GPU today, Nvidia has also made available a new GPU and 3D Vision beta drivers to go along with support for the GeForce GTX 460. The new drivers are version 258.91 and they are also available as a full package for 32-bit and 64-bit Vista and 7 in the form of GeForce 3D Vision Driver CD v1.32 Beta (now called 1.33 beta). Besides the support for the GeForce GTX 460 GPU in the new drivers, something that is no surprise for anyone, there is also support for three new 3D DLP projectors from Optoma and these are: Optoma GT720, Optoma HD67, and Optoma HD66. So if you have one of these already and you’ve had trouble making it work with 3D Vision now you should be able to use it without any trouble as you’ll have official driver level compatibility. These three projectors are all wide aspect ratio and support native resolution of 720p for the HD66 and HD67, along with 800p for the GT720, so the Acer H5360 is finally going to have some competition with other officially supported projectors with higher resolution and wide aspect ratio…

If you were waiting for a more affordable, but still high-performing video card based on the new Nvidia Fermi architecture today that wait seems to be over with the official announcement of the new GeForce GTX 460 GPUs. These come cheaper than the not so long ago GTX 465 ones, but are faster than them, not to mention that the cards based on the new GPUs seem to be cooler and quieter too and offering a good potential for overclocking or at least that is what I’ve been seeing in some of the first reviews already available online…

A bit on the technical side, The GeForce GTX 460 GPU has 336 CUDA cores and 56 texture units and will be available in 2 different versions – with 1GB video memory and 256-bit memory bus and with 768MB video memory and 192-bit memory bus. The GPU’s frequency is 675 MHz by default and the shaders are running at 1350 MHz, but you should be able to easily go even up to 800MHz and maybe even more by overclocking it. The memory is GDDR5 and is running at 1800MHz (3600 effectively) on both models with 768MB and 1GB, and what makes the difference in performance between them is actually the memory bus that limits the maximum bandwidth on the 768MB model. The two models’ recommended end user prices are $199 and $229 USD respectively and they are already starting to appear on stock and for pre-orders at popular online e-tailers like Amazon.com and Newegg.com…

The new GeForce GTX 460 GPUs should be more than capable of handling good enough stereo 3D gaming and Blu-ray 3D playback with GPU acceleration and because of their more affordable price they are also going to be much more attractive for SLI setups. Although if we are going to talk about SLI for 3D Vision Surround, then it is best to go for two GTX 480-based video cards to have the top possible performance, so that you will be able to fully enjoy playing on three monitors in stereo 3D mode… ;)